Stop TPP, Fast Tract, and Unfair Trade!

SOPA.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a bill suggested in late 2011 and tabled in the American House in early 2012. What it proposed was to give the US Justice Department and copyright holders the power to take take down websites due to copyright infringement without hearing a defense by the website owners.It also gave copyright owners the power to lodge complaints that websites infringed on their copyright and seek compensation from ANY company that did business with the website. They could also get the whole website taken down, not just the infringing material, all without entering a courtroom.

SOPA also would have made it a felony to stream pirated material, with a potential jail term of up to five years e.g., watch any video with pirated music on youtube (almost every video) and you could go to jail for it. Taking it even further, posting links to illicit material on social networks could result in the whole network being taken down. The big problem with SOPA was that it would have given the Justice Department power to shut down access to both domestic and foreign sites in the US.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been called “SOPA on steroids” — and for good reason.The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Negotiated behind closed doors by the governments of a dozen countries (including ours) colluding with corporate interests, this secret “trade” deal (much of which has little to do with actual trade) would grant unprecedented snooping and censorship powers to ISPs, copyright holders, and governments. A draft of the “intellectual property rights” chapter of the TPP was leaked recently, and according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it “reflects a terrible but unsurprising truth: an agreement negotiated in near-total secrecy, including corporations but excluding the public, comes out as an anti-user wish list of industry-friendly policies.”1The first stage in the plan to pass the TPP is a big push for Congress to pass fast-track trade authority, which would short-circuit the typical legislative process when trade deals like the TPP come up for a vote.Tell Congress: Say NO to fast-track trade authority. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Fast-track trade authority would allow the president to sign a trade deal before Congress has an opportunity to review or approve it. Then the president could send it to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Fast track would mean there would be no meaningful hearings, limited debate and absolutely no amendments to the deal. And there would be tremendous pressure on Congress to rubber-stamp anything the president signs.

January 2014 marked the twenty-year anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a pact that has had devastating consequences for people and the environment in all three countries and beyond.

The pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been described as “NAFTA on Steroids,”and threatens to: ◾Destroy livelihoods – accelerating the global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions

This is a call to action for communities throughout Mexico, Canada
and the United States to join together and say “ENOUGH!” to
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pending
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other corporate “trade” deals.

Solidarity actions everywhere throughout the globe are also welcome.

The harm that NAFTA has already cost our communities, and the new threats that the TPP poses, must be both acknowledged and resisted. We also need to spread the word that since NAFTA, when people have come together across issue areas and across geographic borders, we have defeated similar corporate power grabs like the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI),
the Millennial Round of the World Trade Organization, and the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA). We will do so again with the TPP.

We are calling on you to help organize demonstrations against NAFTA and the TPP in your community. International marches are planned and people are organize more actions.